


Bitter, Not Babies

by Symmet



Series: Daisy Chains [1]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst, But with daisies, Cole gets really all up in Solas' grill, F/M, Lavellan goes a little crazy to deal with Solas abandoning her, Lavellan is very salty in this one, Major character death - Freeform, Spirit Cole, also, in an angry way, kind of, tea referances
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-21
Updated: 2015-10-21
Packaged: 2018-04-27 10:02:15
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,929
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5044042
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Symmet/pseuds/Symmet
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>AU that when Solas plans to abandon the Inquisition - and his vhenan - she learns the truth about him. And isn't impressed.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Bitter, Not Babies

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this both before finishing the game and long before Trespasser. In fact I wrote it pretty much the moment someone did the Fen'Harel spoiler. So I had assumed that Lavellan found out about Solas being Dread Wolf before the game ended. 
> 
> Poor, ignorant me.
> 
> I chalk the context up to Cole arranging a meet in greet and informing her of the truth before hand. Also inspired by what Solas says through him.
> 
> EDIT: I made cover art!  
> [](http://s1295.photobucket.com/user/arlanengin/media/Daisy%20chains%201_zpsdugdm7l2.png.html)

"I would not wish it on an enemy, let alone someone I cared for."

The words that fall from his mouth seem to dissipate as soon as they came. The tower is so empty, and yet they do not echo.

She is silent a moment, still trying to understand how he cannot see.

"No." She says quietly.

This gets his attention, for there are no tears in her voice - not yet. It is something like a command, and some deeper part of him, the wolf in sheep's clothing, turns its yellow gaze on her then. No god is humble enough not to see who speaks like that. For a moment his back straightens, and the gaze that flickers to her face is predatory and cold. But then the moment is gone.

He is Solas again, just Solas - _oh, if only just Solas_ \- turning towards her because she is his vhenan, because she was his Inquisitor.

Not any more, of course. Not since the glen.

But they've long accepted that was just an adequate lie he'd told himself, to her.

To pretend that what they had was ending.

Truth be told, for all the years between them, she did not understand why  _she_ was the only one to see eternity between them.

And yet she knows he would not listen, even if she could show him. Has decided for himself -  _and worse, for her -_ that they should not be, cannot be,  _will not be._

For all his foolish reasons, his tattered, broken hope that he can still shield her from the things he would do - the person he would become.

Still pretending that she is not his heart, and is most at home only in his chest.

And it makes her  _furious._

So she shakes her head, "You may think you are leaving me to save me, but do not for one moment think there is any path now which doesn't place a burden on me. Do not pretend you will walk away from someone who can heal from this. If _I_ know better, so must you. You leave me behind, I won't be here if you come back."

He does not speak - not for lack of something to say, but because he feels it would offer nothing to appease her.

The tower is cold and the skies are grey.

"I must go now." He says quietly.

She looks away without a word, eyes closed.

But still he knows her eyes follow him as he turns away.

Leaves her to stand alone in an empty, crumbling remnant of his past.

 

 

* * *

 

 

She is not long alone, of course.

The others do not know - not yet.

Perhaps not ever.

She does not have the kind of words to share that secret. The secret that belongs to Solas, no matter the fact that they belong to each other.

Even if he will not admit it.

And then a sigh at her back, a whisper by her feet; she turns, foolishly, towards the door behind her only to see it close.

When she looks back, he is there, plucking at the greens festering between the stonework like a pale, mournful bird.

His hat is only missing an ridiculously large and extravagant feather.

Cole pulls at the weed, stripping the leaves off and inspecting them.

"You tried to guilt him." He says to the empty room - she stays by the door, watching him crouched on the floor.

"I tried to warn him." She says softly, “Perhaps with no small measure of spite, but a warning still."

"A threat, then." Cole says, twisting the stem like a braid.

"A promise." She amended, used to conversations with Cole. They were silent for a pause until Cole threw down the plant and twisted to look at her with a small measure of shock on his face, “Oh!"

She looked at the floor rather than his gaze, switching the weight on her legs awkwardly.

"You really called to me for comfort!" Cole says, “Why didn't you think so earlier?"

She smiles wanly at him. He was the only one she could manage to smile at these days.

After Solas had... ended their relationship.

Or insulted it by attempting to.

"I don't know" she says softly, honestly.

Sometimes it is tiring, being the Inquisitor, who can mend holes in the sky and is the Herald of Andraste and is one of the only things holding this confused country together.

Though she supposes she should change that to Herald of Fen'Harel.

If she didn't feel like crying, she might have smiled at how much Solas would hate that.

The spirit nodded, sliding off the table.

"He thinks you're going to move on, to have beautiful, chubby babies."

"He misunderstood, then." She whispers, voice clogging as she fights the tears, even now.

Cole nods vigorously, jerking his head up and down several times, "Well then. My name is Cole, or something else, if you'd like. But you'd need to tell the others."

He offers her one of the daisies and then takes her hand, awkward and gangly.

"What's your name?" He tilts his head right and left, deep in thought, “Have you decided? It’s hard, sometimes, coming up with a name."

She smiles at him again, and the tears dry away, "Call me Inquisitor." She says quietly, because the name is numb now, meaningless to her, "I have no need for any name that he will not call me by."

Cole nods thoughtfully, “Should I introduce you to everyone else? They'll probably be sad that they didn't get to say goodbye to her."

She shakes her head, "No, if they haven't figured out by now that the person I was is gone, they will learn soon enough."

"Keep telling them that Solas stole your heart," Cole said approvingly, “Breaking, bitter, baited. The only bait was a heart. And he stole it." He tucked the mangled daisy behind her ear, then took a sharp bow.

"Ate." She corrects, a morbidly grim smile settling on her face at the display, “Stole implies it can be recovered." She twists the daisy so it sits easier by her ear and reaches up to her spirit boy and fixes his hat.

Cole's long, thin fingers wrap around her own, a soft, almost warm pressure that is so comforting for a moment she fears she truly _will_ cry - "You could heal, like he planned. The you that you were is not all gone, not _yet_. Drifting, distant, drowning, but you could pull it back out of the waters. It would hurt, but you could. You could still have fat babies." He refitted the hat so it was slightly askew again.

She sighs, letting the tears fade away in favor of the edge in her voice, “That assumes I want to do even remotely  _anything_ according to his plan. Which I don't."

Her hands are still resting on either side of his face as he watches her.

Softly, as if he knows it might hurt her, he says, "Then you're going to save him."

"I'm going to damn well try."

Cole nods, hat flapping, hands slipping off hers so he can place a finger on his chin in consideration. Reluctantly, her own hands fall from his face and by her side. She looks down at the scattered remains of a daisy chain Cole had apparently begun and abandoned on the floor.

"It will be difficult." She says.

"Yes, and it will hurt worse than Corepheus ever could. But Corepheus can't be saved. Not by us."

She peers up through the fringe of her bangs, "And we can't tell anyone."

"No, that's not a secret for them. I told you because you're his heart and you shouldn't lie to yourself."

"He's still trying, though."

"And it makes you very angry."

A crooked smiled, "I do _so_ hate falling in love with someone only to get dumped. But  _imagine_ spending all this time trying to act fine, and not like the most important thing to you has just been ripped out of your chest, and to see him everyday -"

" _Something inside screams like rage and terror and despair when he whispered Inquisitor. Do not call me that. Not when I was so much more._ "

The smile turns tattered at the edges, "Exactly. And then it turns out he's still in love with me and it's not one sided at all, he's just elected to be an idiot in favor of admitting the simplest possible truth available to us. That we're in fucking love and I'm his godsdamn heart."

"You can't live without your heart." The spirit says quietly.

That throws her off from her tirade and she loses the heat immediately.

"No." She says softly, pained, "And I think he knows he's not going to live long after whatever damned mission he's on anyways. And maybe he won't admit it to himself, but the truth is we both know I'd never let that happen."

Cole tilts his head as she sags.

It is so _hard_ to be the alter-ego of the Inquisitor, to always be ready for the fight, for the arguing, for the opposition.

And it is such a lonely tower, with such a lonely, incomplete ring of dying daisies threaded together on the top-most floor.

"We will save him." Cole says.

He offers his other arm to her and she straightens, then takes it as they push open the little door and walk out of the empty, lonely tower, side by side.

There is a cool wind that dares not stir the daisies resting on the top floor.

Slowly, slowly, the sounds of Skyhold begin to reach them again, as if the world has returned and time is back.

And she still has to defeat Corepheus sometime in the next week. Which is not nearly as daunting as the bitter seed of despair that has worked it's way into the void of her heart.

"Say goodbye to the girl I was, Cole." She says softly, and for a moment, sadly.

"Goodbye, goodbye, come back soon, one day he will call and you'll come back, you'll be back!" Cole cries out over the battlements, waving his hat. The wind whisks his shout away, like a promise for a dream that may never become true.

She nearly cries, then.

"What do hearts taste like?" Cole asks thoughtfully as he leads her through the passageways of Skyhold, down the winding steps.

"Chicken, I would wager." She answers, “Though in this instance I hope it tasted like the vilest, oldest, _most_ upsetting tea."

"The daisies would make a bitter tea." Cole offers.

"Good."

He disappears from her side - but only that. He still walks with her, she knows, only she can't see him. A soft brush of pressure at her back makes her want to smile, but already the sounds of Skyhold have taken that from her.

She pushes open a door to a great desk with a map spread over the surface.

"Inquisitor, my scouts said that Solas -"

"Yes, Leliana, it would appear Solas has left us." She walks up to the map and looks it over with a critical eye, as if this is not one of the most distressing moments in her life.

Cassandra forgoes tact and says bluntly, but with concern, "Are you alright?"

She pauses. A hand flits up to tug at the daisy by her brow.

There is a soft pressure at her back again.

"Hardly. But I'm better than Corepheus is going to be. Cullen, tell me about the formations again, how were we thinking of..."

**Author's Note:**

> "Breaking News - _This just in, 'Tol Adopted Son Sides With Mother In Parental Dispute Much To Father's Dismay!' more at 11."_


End file.
